forgotten singles

21 February 2010

Happy Birthday to Jeremiah Griffin Harrison who today turns 61. He was keyboard player for the Modern Lovers on their classic debut recorded in '72 but not released until '76. By that year, Harrison had joined The Talking Heads (the only member of the group not a Rhode Island's School of Design alumn) who released eight studio and two live LPs. You might remember the song Rev It Up, from Harrison's second solo LP, Casual Gods, which received a fair amount of radio and club airplay circa '88. His first solo venture was more under the radar. Along with Bootsy Collins on bass and producer Daniel Lazerus, Harrison released Five Minutes (Bonzo Goes to Washington) in '84, the song featured one of the earliest examples of the now common hip-hop technique of lacing sampled loops of a person's speech (in this case Ronald Reagan's joke accidentally caught on an open mike about his legislation to "outlaw Russia forever" and to "begin bombing in five minutes") throughout a dance mix.